More Than 300 Have Now Joined Submersion

So far 308 people have joined the new 60-day Submersion deep dive (i.e. Subjective Reality immersion), which is awesome, especially for a topic that would scare most people. 🙂

You can see the real-time sign-up count at the top of the Submersion page if you’re curious… at least during the initial launch happening right now.

I’ve never encountered a truly immersive, day-by-day Subjective Reality tour/training like this, so we’re c0-creating it together. As far as I’m aware, nothing like this exists yet. This is one of a kind.

Since we opened the doors one week ago, many participants are several days into Submersion. The feedback thus far has been enthusiastic – really enthusiastic actually. I’m happy to see that people are deeply appreciating the approach we took here, which is different than what we did for Deep Abundance Integration in August.

Submersion is 60 days of audio lessons (streamable or downloadable to any device), so you can focus on the world around you while you listen. On average it’s about 20 minutes per day, so it’s easy to fit it in. And each day there’s at least one reality-bending exercise to do. The exercises aren’t difficult or scary, but they can be mind-altering, making you see reality in fresh and expansive ways.

Here’s a cool stat from the current launch:

28% of people who play the Submersion video join the deep dive

On the Submersion page, there’s a 63-minute video for you to watch. All of the key info is shared up front – in the first 9-10 minutes. It’s not salesy or rah rah, just direct and honest. I recorded it to help you decide if this is a good match for you.

Among the people that play the video on the Submersion page, 28% of them actually join the deep dive. That’s pretty incredible when you think about it, especially because most people don’t watch the whole thing. So this is 28% of the people who merely click the play button on that video that end up buying. Many will drop out in the first few minutes, realizing this isn’t a match for them. I think that’s good. It means the video is helping people filter this decision quickly and easily.

Truthfully most people won’t click Play unless they’re very interested in Subjective Reality, so the real question is how all-in they are with this topic. Are they casual dabblers or genuine explorers? This deep dive is for the explorers.

Most of the people who watch the video past halfway end up joining the deep dive. And many join the deep dive without even finishing the video. So that’s pretty inspiring to see. The video helps people make an aligned decision.

The feedback emails I’m getting suggest the same. For most people this is an easy yes or an easy no.

On a personal note, I’m really glad to see that the style of this video (and others that I’ve been sharing recently) are resonating so well with people. This was a one-take video with no internal edits, no B-roll – nothing fancy at all. But if you look at it from a marketing standpoint, the conversion rate is off the charts. I think that’s because it’s not actually trying to convert you. It’s really intended to help people who are already a powerful match for this type of experience to feel aligned with what they already know.

With this approach we can have a more focused and energized group going through the deep dive. That’s better for me, and it’s better for the participants.

What if you can’t afford it?

The only objection I’ve seen so far is a personal one: Some people feel they can’t afford Submersion even as they acknowledge the value of it. I understand that since I used to be broke too. For years I passed up interesting experiences because I felt I couldn’t afford them. And at the time, I was right… and perhaps so are you. I’d have had to go deeper into debt to afford some personal growth experiences, and I couldn’t find a way to justify that. But what I didn’t realize at the time was how that level of thinking kept me stuck and what I needed to shift to get past it.

Eventually I learned the difference between spending on personal growth and investing in my personal growth. I realized that if I genuinely felt something was a worthwhile investment that I’d otherwise miss if I didn’t do it, I would somehow find a way to make it work. And most importantly, I could feel good about it – uplifted and not stressed. I didn’t always get those decisions right, but sometimes I did… like the time I spent $1000 on Jay Abraham tapes to learn more about marketing. I made around $10K back from applying those ideas within the first 6 months. So that was an investment, not an expense.

For me a personal growth investment is something that I’ll apply and use to good effect, even if the benefit isn’t financial. An expense is a consumable that won’t pay off any meaningful value beyond the initial consumption.

If you’re looking at Submersion like an investment that will permanently change the course of your life, it will very likely be worth doing, even if it’s a stretch to make it work financially. But if you’re approaching this as yet another consumable and your interest in Subjective Reality is merely casual, then I’d encourage you to skip this one, and just watch movies like The Matrix or Inception instead – that’s the fantasy version, while the real practice of Subjective Reality is quite different.

I deliberately priced Submersion high enough so as to be a fantastic deal for those who see it as an investment – while hopefully repelling those who’d only want to consume it for the entertainment value. This is one of my life’s major works, easily in the top 20 of the creative projects I’ve taken on, and I want to enjoy the process of creating and sharing this as much as possible. So that’s why I only want to do this with the most aligned people. I have zero interest in scooping up more people if it would mean watering down the overall alignment and messing up the specialness of this experience for all involved.

When I was broke, I noticed that sometimes my most positive emotions really wanted me to do something, and what held me back was the practical side. But it wasn’t really practical. It was fear, worry, and self doubt masquerading as being logical, sensible, and risk averse. The truth was that of course I could usually find a way to afford something if I really wanted or needed it. I could find a way to earn some extra income to cover it. Or I could commit to doing something that would cover the cost. Or I’d have to up-level my manifestation skills and get the universe aligned with helping me. No matter what, the invitation required me to upgrade the way I was using my energy. I had to – first energetically – find a way to create what I wanted by feeling aligned with it on the inside. Once I reached that point where I just knew there was a way, I made it happen, and I felt extra proud of myself for stretching into something that initially seemed out of reach.

This type of decision is independent of your income. It’s not about being broke. There will always be some new invitation dangling just out of reach – or is it? And these invitations keep showing up in new ways. Reality doesn’t let you settle.

One year ago I had to decide whether to pay $30,000 to join a new mastermind group. That’s $30K per year, not just one time. Just the thought of doing that gave me a twinge of fear and excitement. I could have talked myself out of it, but that wouldn’t have riled me up as much. But by this point I knew better. I had to keep stretching myself. So I paid the $30K and immersed myself in a group of people who stretched me. Making that decision is one reason I’ve been stepping up my creative game a lot this year.

The funny thing is that looking back, I think that just making that $30K decision actually provided me with more value in terms of creative energy flow and expansive thinking than the practical networking side of the mastermind group. Sure I got some good ideas and made cool new friends along the way, but the biggest boost was internal. In order to make that decision, I first had to internalize the notion that I was indeed the kind of person who could accept such an invitation, which was beyond anything I’d done before. And that shift felt like a permanent one. Even if this was only a one-time thing, I’ll always have the reference experience of knowing that I’m the kind of person who can bet big on his personal growth.

And then of course, reality doesn’t stop. Now that $30K investment seems like a modest one relative to other opportunities I’ve become aware of within the past year.

I can’t say that this decision is similar for you. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But I can say that there’s a difference between making an aligned decision that stretches you vs. making one that keeps you feeling small. And the key is the nature of the emotion you feel when you focus on the possibility of leaning into it and contrasting that with the disappointment (or the suppression of most emotion) that you feel on the side of inaction.

As good as the Submersion deep dive is turning out to be, it wouldn’t surprise me if the even bigger gains you get from joining are the long-term energy boost and the identity shift from becoming the kind of person who can and will invest in this sort of thing, even when it feels like a big stretch to do so. And partly because of this effect, I genuinely believe that I’m not actually doing anyone a favor if I capitulate to their pleas for extra discounts or scholarships. But nor do I hold those pleas against them. I made similar pleas when I felt I needed to, but looking back, they didn’t serve me, and it was actually better for my own growth when people declined those pleas. I didn’t realize at the time that they saw me as more powerful than I was seeing myself. And so right now, I’m playing that role for you.

I see you as more powerful than you see yourself. When you say you can’t afford something, I see the part of you that can… not by going into debt or by freaking yourself out… but by becoming the kind of person who can and will invest in what you want and feel strong about making an aligned choice. The willingness to step into that form of courage is a prerequisite for doing Submersion together. Everyone else has had to see themselves at this kind of person. I cannot take that decision from your shoulders. It has to be yours. If you want a stronger and more trusting relationship with reality, it’s important to start trusting in your own strength too.

What you can or can’t afford is for you to decide. It’s not my place to answer that for you. All I can do is help you make an aligned decision, and that’s my intention in sharing this.

I can say that I feel very aligned with Submersion’s price, and even though several people have asked, I’m not doing any scholarships or or cutting side deals with anyone. So you should know that everyone who’s doing this deep dive with you has been offered and accepted the same deal. Even several of my friends and at least one member of my mastermind group bought it. And they all paid the same price.

Honor is one of my highest values, and I explain the honor code in the Submersion video too. To me it’s important to cultivate a trust-based relationship with people who engage in these deep dives. So you don’t even need to ask about scholarships, trades, or extra discounts because I don’t do that. But having been there myself, I won’t hold it against you if you do.

The offer here is a simple one for you to decide – yes or no, take it or leave it. See if you can say a genuine yes if the offer appeals to you, and if not, then allow yourself to accept the no and to live with it.

How This Deep Dive Is Affecting Me

While sign-ups for a new deep dive are great, and I surely love that hundreds of people are doing this together now, it’s super important to me that I continue to enjoy the work I do, especially after 14+ years of blogging, speaking, etc. Maintaining high motivation is at least 80% due to the people I get to work with each day. It’s no secret that I really love the people in our community – so much that I married a customer earlier this year. 😉

I also live and breathe these ideas with you. As I design and record the Submersion lessons, I’m creating the course for myself too. This is the course I soooo wish I’d had when I first began exploring Subjective Reality many years ago. So this is a very personal deep dive for me, and it’s been affecting me a lot already.

Interacting more deeply with these ideas is causing me to re-evaluate old decisions and expand into new areas of possibility. For example, I put some money into advertising this launch (Facebook and Instagram), and I’d never done that before. I’ve spent more than $2K on online advertising since the weekend, and I’m going to keep running with it even beyond this launch.

It wasn’t the objective perspective that made me get into this. It was actually the subjective angle that gave me the courage to finally invest in advertising. I dove into this headfirst with a playful and creative attitude instead of worrying about the money. I figured that even if I lost money, I could make it fun, and I’d learn something, and those are worthy reasons to do it. So I deliberately made mistakes with it. I set up suboptimal ads on purpose, such as by using a stock image – but it was a stock image I really liked. I threw money at this just for fun, and I kept trying to spend more each day… like “Ooh… let’s see what boosting a post does, and let’s set the slider to the maximum spend to see what that does.” And, “Hey… I should run more ads to people in India because why not?”

And guess what… fun works. Not only have the ads been doing very well, but they’re serving a powerful purpose of reconnecting with some people who followed my work years ago and lost touch. Old friends are reaching out to reconnect because of these ads too. I never thought of advertising as a social thing, but I’m sure you can see how it might have that effect.

I’d always framed advertising as this cold, calculating monster that intruded into people’s lives. But the problem isn’t advertising – it’s misaligned advertising. The subjective lens helped me unload such limiting beliefs. I now see advertising as something that can be playful, fun, engaging, and social if I approach it with aligned energy and intentions.

In fact, I’m noticing in general that as I powerfully increase my personal commitment to following my own path with a heart and shedding more of the misaligned, including seemingly minor misalignments, I’m able to re-engage with some aspects of life that I’d previously rejected due to misalignment problems. Social media is a good example. I’ve been gradually re-engaging with it in the past several weeks, and it’s going well. And it’s not because social media is different than it was several years ago when I swore it off and deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s because I’ve found a better way to make the experiences feel aligned. I bring a different energy to the experience, free of the baggage that previously led to a build-up of resentment.

What really blew my mind was seeing people expressing gratitude in the comments on the ads and re-sharing them too. I didn’t expect that at all. That was a powerful reframe for me. I created these ads with a spirit of play and invitation, and it’s beautiful to see that people received them as such.

My previous limitation was thinking that if I ever invested in advertising, people would hate me for it, and I’d have to deal with a lifetime of negative energy – not to mention hateful emails – beaming at me ever after. So I kept my business smaller than I otherwise could have. I thought there were vicious sharks in that water, and maybe there are some, but the water is actually teaming with friendly dolphins.

Long after today, I’m going to keep investing in more ads – for Submersion, for Deep Abundance Integration, and for future deep dives. Financially the results are good enough to make this a no-brainer for business reasons alone. But that by itself wouldn’t be enough to motivate me to do it. What motivates me more is having a fresh outlet for creative expression to explore. And now I feel confident that I can do this in an aligned way. It’s like discovering this huge amusement park just down the street that you never knew existed before.

I’ll also start paying to advertise blog posts just to share more value with people. The money is play stuff, and if we’re not having fun with it, then what’s the point of earning it? The potential to use advertising to invite more people get into personal growth has been just the insight I needed to finally walk through this door in a way that feels fun and exciting. This no longer looks like a cold path but not feels like a very warm one.

Money becomes difficult to earn when we don’t enjoy how we earn it. So I’m always on the lookout for ways to earn income through playfulness and creativity rather than repetitive drudgery. I deliberately leave money on the table if earning it would make my life feel less aligned.

Submersion Will Stay Open Indefinitely

Anyway… Submersion will remain open indefinitely, so it’s not going to disappear or anything like that. I expect that it will remain open for many years, if not decades. So feel free to sign up whenever you feel ready.

The course is yours for life, and it’s entirely self-paced whenever you join, so you could also join now and start it next month if you want.

Take your time to decide. I see this as a $1-2K course that we’re creating, and so even at $297, I think it’s under-priced relative to the value. That was certainly the case with Deep Abundance Integration.

If you’re into reality-bending experiments, this is totally for you. If you merely click the play button on the Submersion video, you have a 28% chance of signing up. And if you keep watching past halfway, then you probably will sign up.

This deep dive is attracting a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm – even the ads for it are fueling this effect – so I invite you to join us in a very unique exploration. I just can’t predict what it will do to you. I couldn’t even predict in advance how this was going to affect me, but I like it!